Little Mix BRIT nominated hit 'was not expected to do well', says collaborator

02 March 2024 , 12:00

1097     0

Christian of Galantis has opened up about his tracks with Little Mix and 5 Seconds of Summer

Galantis has revealed he never imagined his biggest track featuring Little Mix would storm the charts.

Christian "Bloodshy" Karlsson teamed up with David Guetta and the former pop trio for the huge hit Heartbreak Anthem back in 2021 and although it was nominated for a BRIT Award, he says nobody, other than him pushed for the single.

"It was amazing," he exclusively told the Mirror, adding: "That song, I wasn't expecting it to do that well, I just loved that song. I fought for it without people hearing it in advance saying 'This is a big hit', nobody really said that. I kept on believing in it and I was stoked when David wanted to jump on and Little Mix. It turned out to be amazing, it's still doing great, it's streaming like crazy and it's one of my biggest records now."

The single, released in May 2021 came following the departure of Jesy Nelson who quit the band for personal reasons, with many believing it was a message to Nelson.

Little Mix teamed up with Galantis for the 2021 hit Heartbreak Anthem – but he was the only one who championed the mega hit (WireImage)

Now, Christian is back with his latest track, Lighter, once again featuring French legend David Guetta and Aussie quartet, 5 Seconds of Summer. Discussing teaming up with David once again, Christian told me: "There's always something that just seems to be working out really good when we do work. Third time's a charm!"

BRITs host Mo Gilligan 'sees where Sam Smith is coming from' over female snub

Although 5SOS are arguably one of the biggest bands, having achieved global fame after touring with One Direction, Christian admits he wasn't fully aware of who they are. "I heard they were a huge band and I was very excited to check them out, how they are as creators, songwriters and producers," he said.

He added: "It was amazing, they were super inspired and wanted to get on with it, they started sending me guitar stuff that they had recorded. I asked if they were down if I did live strings which I loved to do and they were super into it, they asked 'Can we do some live drums!?' I was like 'Yeah!'

"It turned really spontaneous, just sending stuff back and forth. I've got to say, it's a real collaboration, not just 'Here's my part, you do your part,' – it was actually back and forth about things and 'What about this and this?' It was very inspiring working with them, I really enjoyed it."

Christian has praised 5 Seconds of Summer for their work on the single Lighter

I was one of the first people to hear Lighter ahead of its release and instantly fell in love with the track, with Christian admitting that he "felt good" as he hadn't played it for many people. Last year, the Swedish-born megastar opened up about being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. The star stated that growing up, he had no idea there was a medical term for the "different wiring" in his brain.

Discussing his diagnosis, he said: "It's been a journey for me. I feel I'm in a good space and music has always been my medication, not the only one, but my first option. It's been a great year. Last year was amazing in terms of being in the studio and I put some time into not doing too many shows, I was very open-minded about different collaborations, this was one of them."

He went on to say: "This was one of the things where I didn't know where it would go but I wanted to try. I loved working with 5 Seconds of Summer so I took my time, changed things around and it was a very playful session and I think it turned out really great.

"There's so much going into the song and usually that might be very hard and tricky to make it sound like it's not too busy or too many genres but I feel like this makes sense. There are different things like live elements mixed with dance music."

While Lighter has only just been released, Christian admits that's eager to get back into the studio and has already decided he's going to step out of his comfort zone and collaborate with somebody that he doesn't know and experiment with his sound across various genres.

Daniel Bird